Oxford gaming company offers ‘golden ticket’ student internships

After graduating from Wadham and St John’s respectively, Chris and Jason Kingsley founded their games company, Rebellion, in 1992. Today, Rebellion is one of Europe's biggest independent multimedia studios. Known for such games as Sniper Elite series and Zombie Army, Rebellion also produces books, TV, film, board games, and such iconic comics as Roy of the Rovers and 2000 AD featuring Judge Dredd. Since 2010, this growing studio has focused almost exclusively on developing and publishing their own titles and IP.

Chris, Jason, and the Rebellion team are keen to nurture the next generation of talent in their field. Accordingly, they worked with the Kingsley brothers’ alma maters, Wadham and St John’s, to offer internships to the colleges’ students. The experience exceeded the expectations of everyone involved to the extent that Rebellion and both colleges plan to expand the internship programme in 2026.

In summer 2025, five students, two from St John’s and three from Wadham, joined Rebellion for a six-week period. The company’s Head of People, Fiona Knight, and the heads of the host departments ensured that the interns would get maximum benefit from the experience by working on live projects, which enabled them to translate their theoretical knowledge into practice. The team leaders decided on the areas of work that their new recruits would focus on in advance, depending on their skills and primary areas of interest. Each intern completed a discrete project that their teams continue to use and have brought long-term benefits to Rebellion.

Neil O’Connell, Head of the Web team, and Louise Westwood, Head of Finance, found that they and their team members learned from the students as well as vice versa during the internships. Rebellion’s workforce comprises a diverse range of people with different skills sets, but with the common factor of being passionate about what they do. It was valuable to the company to bring in interns with innovative ideas, who shared their passion and wanted to immerse themselves in the environment. The interns were also up to date with the latest trends for some of their target audiences and could offer new insights into reaching these groups.

During his six weeks with Rebellion’s Finance team, Tom West, a final-year History student at St John’s, designed a new system to streamline the process of making royalty payments. This was a complex challenge, which involved over 300 unique contracts. Tom worked with colleagues in the Publishing team to streamline and automate the process, resulting in a new and vastly improved system that is now in use. Tom’s internship was not only CV-enhancing for him. It has added considerable value to the work of the Finance team.

Tom said:

My internship in the finance team at Rebellion was absolutely brilliant. I was given real responsibility right away. The team was so welcoming and, for the six weeks I was there, I really felt like I was part of the team. I not only developed my Excel skills, but also more general teamwork and leadership skills.

Helena Wu, a 1st year Maths student at Wadham, spent her internship in the Commercial Finance team. She built a sales-forecast model that the team will develop further and use as a working tool going forward.

Helena said:

I really valued the significant autonomy and responsibility we were given from the start. Our managers were excellent mentors—they provided clear guidance while empowering us to develop and test our own ideas, which was incredibly motivating.

The culture was another highlight; everyone was exceptionally supportive, collaborative, and genuinely nice, making it a fantastic environment to learn and contribute.

Finally, the internship provided a deep and practical understanding of the gaming industry, far beyond a surface-level view. It was a rewarding experience that strengthened my interest in the field.

Initially, Neil O’Connell had planned to recruit only one intern for the Web team. However, Saeed Mahar, who had just completed the first year of his Maths and Computer Science undergraduate degree, and Grace Yu, a second-year Experimental Psychology student, each impressed him so much that he changed his mind. The two candidates stood out in terms of their enthusiasm and initiative. Their different but complementary skills sets meant that they could work as a team, bringing different areas of expertise to a project. Saeed has excellent technical skills and his internship involved working on a system monitoring project. The Web team will continue to build on the foundation he has developed.

Saeed said:

‘The Web Dev team at Rebellion was very welcoming and gave me time to settle in and pick up the context of their work and projects before letting me decide the course of the internship. At the start this meant I met all the members of the team, learned about their work, and got a feel for the tasks they dealt with. I took part in daily stand-up sessions.

Early on, I got involved in group testing of a new online store page that was in development. From here, I became interested in learning about professional software testing work – and got to write some of my own code to visually test UI components. I then decided to focus on DevOps and picked up a project that Rebellion’s DevOps engineer was keen to implement. I really got to take ownership of this project at my own pace. Everyone was available for help when I got stuck or wanted to ask a question. Through this, I got to learn industry standard technologies like Kubernetes, and a lot about various cloud computing constructs and technologies.

In addition, I had a chance to participate in a variety of Agile ceremonies – ranging from engaging with planning and reviewing of the work done and to do, to participating in a one-day Hackathon. There were social events and opportunities, including informal outings with my colleagues and the annual summer barbecue. During my time at Rebellion, I felt like I was an appreciated member of the team and could deliver on something concrete with the support of everyone around me.
Wadham was also been very supportive in providing accommodation for the entire duration of the internship, and with the generous grants from the College and the pay from the internship I did not have to worry about accommodation or other costs. It has been an amazing experience, and a very friendly one for my first summer internship!

Grace participated in developing the content editorial system and built templates for a public-facing website. She played a valuable role in a hackathon for multi-variant testing, as her psychology background helped her to critique the design to increase user engagement, bringing insights from a perspective that the team would not otherwise have had.

Rebellion’s outputs appeal to a wide range of audiences. This is reflected in the diversity of the team, who might be keen gamers, movie fans, or passionate about popular culture. Every member of team knows where they fit and that their role is important in the overall picture. The entertainment industry is about bringing joy to its customers. It is important for those working in this field to enjoy what they do, as this comes through in the end product, and the interns’ enthusiasm shone through during their time at Rebellion.

The Games industry is evolving quickly, and Rebellion is committed to encouraging emerging talent. Work experience is available for school students and Rebellion has links with universities that are known for gaming courses. Their first internship programme has been hugely successful for the company and for the students, which Wadham and St John’s have been delighted to see.

We look forward to seeing what the first and subsequent cohorts of interns do next and if they will follow in the Chris and Jason’s footsteps!